


for this moment, you've gone on a very long journey

by jonphaedrus



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: F/M, Gen, casually stabs myself in the foot, thisisfine.jpg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:24:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She hefts Auron’s sword over her shoulder, now too heavy for her to swing, and keeps walking, walking, walking on.</p><p>She hasn’t long to wait, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for this moment, you've gone on a very long journey

**Author's Note:**

> I've come to see you. I've come to see you. I've come before I disappear  
> I want you to look carefully  
> From the indelible inside of your heart to the faraway world
> 
> I've come to see you. I've come to see you. I've come here to see you  
> I've come because I want you to know me and know you  
> From your tears' birthplace to the dried off world
> 
> Don't laugh, OK? I'm forever waiting for you, too  
> Don't forget, OK? That you have a place to return to
> 
>  
> 
> [namida no furusato | tear's native place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vP8AMNuShQ)

When Rikku is fifteen, Auron dies.

Well. Sort of. He was always kind of dead, but still.

 

 

When Rikku is seventeen, Tidus comes back to life.

Well. Sort of. He kind of never was alive in the first place, but still.

 

 

When Rikku is nineteen, Tidus and Yuna get married, and all around the Besaid campfire there’s cheering and laughter, joy and exuberance. When Yuna takes Tidus’ hand and pulls him away, off to their tent, she sits there, toes curled up in the sand and smiles after them, feeling both subdued and pleased. 

“She doesn’t need you to protect her any more.” Says Paine, not looking at her. “You’ll have to let it go eventually,” She’s sitting next to Rikku, laying down on her back, staring at the stars. “He’s not coming back.”

“I know,” Rikku replies, fingers laced over her knees. “I don’t expect him to.”

She never has.

 

 

When Rikku is twenty two, Yuna and Tidus finally decide to settle down and raise their kids in some sort of a normal environment—or whatever a normal environment counts as, given their extended, adopted family. Alone, since Paine does what Paine wants, Rikku gives up her bomb-slinging ways with a sigh (she’s not nearly fast enough any more, not alone, although she doesn’t think she’ll _ever_ stop stealing people blind) and she sorts through her dresspheres for a while before she picks Samurai. It’ll take some getting used to, and it’s heavier, but it lets her keep fighting by herself.

It gives her a great measure of comfort—even alone, as she is—to have Auron’s sword.

It never turned into pyreflies.

Swords don’t work that way.

 

 

When Rikku is thirty, Yuna and Tidus have managed to have three sprightly children—Jecht, Braska, and Auron, all strapping, energetic boys by the time they can walk. They take after their namesakes, even as young as they are: Jecht is literally impossible to get out of the water and away from Blitzball, Braska is thoughtful, reserved, and kind, and Auron is brusque and gruff.

Well, as much as a one year old can be.

 

 

When Rikku is thirty-five, she becomes a guide for those wishing to undertake the pilgrimage journey. They aren’t Summoners, not any more, but it’s still a large part of all their cultures, and she gives to them what they can: safety, a modicum of comfort. She knows all the steps, all the puzzles, all the traps, and it comes to her as easy as breathing.

When she walks, guiding civilians and priests and children, too young to know anything else, when she fights, she doesn’t think about the fact that from here on in, she’s older than Auron ever really got to be.

It’s very lonely.

His sword is heavy, it’s handle worn to a palm far larger than hers, but she brings it with her, never quite can bring herself to set it down.

It’s all she’s really got left.

 

 

When Rikku is forty, Yuna says, “You should settle down,” one night away from their kids, and their family, her legs in the Besaid water. “I mean, not, like, get married, or anything. But we’re all getting older. I don’t want you to get hurt, out there, alone.”

Rikku hums, and shrugs, making a sand angel with her arms and legs while she stares up at the stars.

She can feel Yuna staring at her, and Rikku looks over—it’s hard to believe that after all that time she spent looking after, protecting Yuna, carrying Yuna, they’re both getting older.

That, now that nobody has to worry about Yuna any more, Yuna worries about all of them.

“I’m good,” Rikku says at last. “I like it, on the road. Without Home, this is the best that I can get, I think.”

Neither of them says anything, but Yuna takes Rikku’s hand, and they hold onto each other very tight, there on that beach beneath the stars in the great silence of Spira.

 

 

When Rikku is forty-five, Auron—little Auron, with his father’s wild shock of blond hair and his mother’s mis-matched eyes—comes to her as she crouches down outside his parents’ house, tying up her sandals, and he plants his sword in the ground and crosses his arms.

“Aunt Rikku,” he says, with all the same seriousness she herself mustered at his age, “I want you to train me.”

She pauses, and looks up at him. Auron might not be in his family tree, but he has that same squared jaw and insightful eyes: he’ll be a hell of a warrior someday, she knows that much.

“Did you ask your parents?” She says, instead, standing up and pulling her—Auron’s—sword from the ground next to her, lifts it over her shoulder, one hand on her hip.

“Mom said I could.” Rikku doubts she did in so many words, but Yuna knows that her children have dreams, desires, just like she did. Already, they’re growing up. Already, this Auron is the same age that Rikku was when she took the Pilgrimage, a lifetime ago.

“It’ll be hard,” she promises him, and he nods. “You’ll have blisters. You’ll face your fears. You might die. Can you handle that?”

“You did,” he replies, and he’s right, of course.

 

 

When Rikku is fifty, she turns Auron away for the last time. “I don’t have anything else to teach you,” she tells him, her blonde hair gone grey around her face, her knees aching from so many years bouncing on them. “The rest, you have to learn for yourself.” 

He watches her, with his mothers’ eyes in his father’s face, with a name that tastes bittersweet to Rikku on her tongue, as bittersweet as the pain in her wrists from wielding a sword half again as tall as she is.

“What will I do?” Auron asks, still so young, still so afraid.

“This is it,” Rikku tells him. “This is your story.” The words are heavy in her heart. They pass from the hands of one generation to the next, to the next, from mentor to father to aunt to son. “It all begins here.”

Auron leaves, and she is glad for it, because the ghosts haunt him, and haunt her.

She’s better alone.

 

 

When Rikku is seventy, she starts to dream of pyreflies at night.

She hefts Auron’s sword over her shoulder, now too heavy for her to swing, and keeps walking, walking, walking on.

She hasn’t long to wait, now.

**Author's Note:**

> it's been literally almost eight years since i fell into the aurriku hole yet here i am again
> 
> check me out on tumblr @[professorjonathanphaedrus](http://professorjonathanphaedrus.tumblr.com/) or twitter @[jonphaedrus](https://twitter.com/jonphaedrus)
> 
> if you're interested in following me on twitter, please send me an ask on tumblr first!


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